Leckie has handled this badly. Where are his ALP mates?

CHANNEL 7 boss David Leckie said it was the worst day of his career when his sales director James Warburton quit to join rival Network Ten.

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Rape is unacceptable. There is no suggestion it is widespread among the defense force. There. Is a suggestion that bastardization is part of officer training. It looks like ALP have failed many separate tests of leadership and now is trying to change the military while ordering them into a war zone and not supporting them.

So he is going to join the army?

A 14-YEAR-OLD who allegedly asked an 11-year-old girl to send him a naked picture of herself via Facebook has appeared in court.

David Daniel BallThis article is a media beat up. The issue is serious but the conclusions overdrawn. Is it a Facebook problem? Is it the result of lack of parental guidance? Is it the result of a child playing out what the media portray as adult behavior? The issue of most concern to me is not that they are FB contacts but that they probably know each other through a common vector of family or school and the boys behavior is predatory and the girl is vulnerable and unsupervised.

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This is nothing less than an effort to obscure issues and assert a new social agenda. We could support our troops in Afghanistan, but instead subject our best to faux inquiry, as we have with two SAS facing murder charges. They aren't going to look at Rudd's brow beating of a steward. But they will tar as sex offenders every person in uniform.

SEX Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick will lead an inquiry into the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force Academy and into career pathways for women in Defence.

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He argues from the position that he doesn't understand. Never a good argument. He doesn't understand how Jesus is the "way the truth and the life." Everything that follows that early statement is gibberish.

Rob Bell really comes clean... In this little excerpt from his book Love Wins, we see that he believes that everyone can get to heaven through Jesus even if they don't know it's through Jesus, no matter what religion you are. It's interesting because he says he is not a universalist, but at best I w

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I think the system is ok in Australia but can be made stronger. I think if we give up the concept of a secret vote, still keeping it private, we could implement a cheaper, better online voting system. If we didn't make it compulsory we could change the behaviour of those running for office. At the moment those running for office take their constituents for granted. At least in the US politicians appeal to their const

FB is becoming an active agent for the left?

Until Anthony gets back, when we can see about a more permanent solution, we want to encourage our readers to all share WUWT articles via your Facebook accounts, and when FB gives you “this is an abusive site” pop-up, as seen in the graphic above, to click the “Let us know” appeal link to submit an

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 12, 11 (03:17 am)

The sea is like a soft drink. Put a glass of lemonade in the sun and it quickly becomes flat. Leave it in the fridge and the fizz – the carbon dioxide – bubbles for longer.

There is a similar effect when carbon dioxide is swallowed by the ocean. Each year, about a quarter of human carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by the sea. Some is taken up by warmer water in the tropics, but more is retained in the cold water at the poles.

But when Mama Ocean doesn’t suck down enough carbon dioxide, well, you know what that means:

Too much CO2: Clown fish are losing the ability to navigate

Who would want to live in such a world, with clown fish – determined, destination-obsessed clown fish – not knowing where to go? Imagine all the scheduling problems.

Donna Roberts, leader of the ocean acidification project at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre in Hobart, said the potential ramifications of changes in krill development and distribution were startling.

Apparently “embryonic krill exposed to high carbon dioxide levels [are] developmentally impaired”, which is a great concern. You’d hate for krill to miss out on any scholarships. But back to the clown fish, bumbling around the CO2-infested oceans without a sat-nav:

‘’Finding Nemo is going to be a lot harder in a future ocean,’’ Dr Roberts said.

That’s why happens when you have as Prime Minister and then Foreign Minister a man who has not Australia’s interests at heart, but his own - and particularly his own interests in a United Nations stage.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, April 12, 11 (06:11 am)

The Gillard Government demands women be allowed to serve in the front line, including with the SAS:

WOMEN will be allowed to serve in frontline combat roles after the Gillard government ordered the Australian Defence Force to bring forward the removal of bans that have stopped women from applying for the most dangerous and demanding military jobs.

Entry selection to the SAS requires at least one year served in an army unit, typically the commando regiment or combat engineers. What follows is a combination of some of the most gruelling physical and mental tests designed to weed out all but the most dedicated.

Tests vary, but can involve carrying an 80kg pack on endurance marches lasting several days. A test this year required entrants to each carry two 20-litre jerry cans of water in addition to their combat rucksacks.

The VC was awarded for a battle in June 2010, when RS and approximately 25 SASR soldiers assaulted from helicopters into the Shah Wali Kot region of Southern Afghanistan, a known Taliban stronghold. After immediately coming under heavy fire, RS and 2 others slowly worked their way up to 3 Taliban machine gun positions where they were pinned down. RS then stormed the Taliban positions head on over 40 metres of open ground and eliminated all 3 guns and their occupants. He then worked his way back, continuing to eliminate enemy positions in depth. He said of his actions “I looked over and saw my mates getting ripped up, and I wasn’t going to do nothing. So I thought I’d have a crack.’

The old tests that demanded recruits drag weighted tyres at speed, or scale 2m walls, have been relaxed or scrapped since the Labor Government came to power and started to preach gender politics.

How well that change worked. Soon the Auditor-General could note: “Since 1999, the proportion of female applicants who successfully completed the (fitness) test is 80 per cent, compared with approximately 30 per cent in the 1990s before the changes were made.”

This seems to be only good news to Nixon, who prefers police to back off rather than biff, even when confronting the rampaging lawless, and who now has officers in Frankston writing letters to repeat offenders asking them, pretty please, to stop.

But Nixon’s feminisation of the force has not just given us police who seem unwilling to stand up to a rabble—as we saw at last year’s G20 riots—but police who seem physically unable to.

Frustrated male officers have told me of having to work on patrol with women who couldn’t be counted on in a confrontation with hoons, needing as much police protection as the public.

Now, I read the incident fact sheet that poor constables Sharna and Nicole filed on Sunday to explain how Sharna came to scratch her hands...

Air Chief Marshal Houston told Mr Smith on Saturday he would resign if the minister insisted he remove the head of the Australian Defence Force Academy over his handling of the incident.

Asked to respond last night, Mr Smith’s office issued a one-line statement saying “the response of the Minister for Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force is that this claim is entirely basesless, without foundation, and not worthy of the speculation”.

At a joint announcement earlier yesterday, Mr Smith said ADFA commandant Bruce Kafer had been sent on leave while a series of reviews into the incident were completed. But Commodore Kafer was not removed from his position.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, April 12, 11 (05:53 am)

More witterings of the increasinlgly messianic Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery on global warming. First, he claims - against the case-closed evidence presented by interviewer Greg Cary - that China is tacking global warming, believing “climate change is a threat to the existence of the communist party”.

Then Flannery, a paleontologist, offers this bizarre reason for reason for ignoring sceptic Professor Richard Lindzen, whom he admits is a world-renown and reputable climate scientist:

The problem with Richard Lindzen is his politics is to the right of Andrew Bolt and Genghis Khan.

It’s hard to know where to start with this spectacularly stupid statement, even more wrong in principle than it is in facts.

Australian scientists have found that humans were to blame for the extinction of Australia’s giant marsupials, reptiles and birds, the so-called ‘megafauna’. Dr Richard Roberts and Professor Tim Flannery have dated the extinction at around 46,000 years ago. “We believe that in the absence of humans, the giant marsupials would still be in Australia today.”

The Sydney Morning Herald June 5 2004:

The Dean of Science at the University of NSW, Professor Mike Archer, has closely followed the debate and says the new paper by the University of Sydney scientists Dr Steve Wroe and colleagues Judith Field, Richard Fullagar and Lars Jermiin is another nail in the coffin for Blitzkrieg. “Blitzkrieg was put forward in times when it was popular for people to be blamed for everything that was wrong in the world,” Archer says. “Blame cannot be laid at the feet of humans based on any evidence that has turned up to date.” Australia’s main proponent of Blitzkrieg, Dr Tim Flannery, disagrees. He cites other new research which says that when computer models are run Blitzkrieg is inevitable. “The [new] paper presents a far from convincing case,” Flannery says.

The progressive loss of local megafauna was initiated well before the accepted period of human continental colonisation. Hence, the data suggest that humans were unlikely to have played any role in the extirpation of the affected local megafauna during that interval.

Dear Prof Flannery, Is your continued support of the Blitzkrieg theory for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna (an increasingly marginal theory lying outside the current consensus of mainstream science that claims humans were solely responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna) and apparent ignorance of the overwhelming evidence supporting the long-term role played by changing climate in the decline of the megafauna, a sign that you are a climate change denier?

Legislation to repeal New Hampshire’s participation in RGGI recently passed the house, but has yet to pass the Senate…

Critics of the program point out that New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York diverted some of that RGGI revenue to fill their budget gaps…

In Maine, Republican Senator Tom Saviello is sponsoring a bill that would withdraw his state from RGGI.

“We need to ask this question, number one do we want to put the extra cost on our electricity, and number two if these energy efficient projects are that good, which everybody says they are, well then a business should be willing to put their own money into it, why should we be subsidizing that…

New Jersey’s Governor is also talking about withdrawing from RGGI… Anthony Leiserowitz, with the Yale University Project on Climate Change, says if New Jersey steps out it could deal a death blow to RGGI.

Andrew Bolt – Monday, April 11, 11 (04:50 pm)

As I’ve said before, the treatment of the 18-year-old woman at the centre of the “Skype Affair” seems appalling, if the facts are as we’re told.

So I don’t have a problem with Defence Minister Stephen Smith today announcing an inquiry into how the Australian Defence Forces Academy dealt with the woman’s complaint after she discovered that her sex with a fellow cadet was broadcast to a room next door where several other cadets were watching.

The problem is Smith didn’t announce one inquiry, but at least seven or eight - including inquiries, or actually predetermined outcomes, into issues only peripheral to the incident that sparked this furore.

Today I announce that Ms Elizabeth Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, on behalf of the Australian Human Rights Commission, will lead an examination of the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA).

She will also review the progress of existing strategies identified by the Chief of the Defence Force’s Women’s Advisory Group, including pathways for women into Australian Defence Force (ADF) leadership…

Ms Broderick’s work is the first step in the comprehensive review of the culture both within ADFA and the ADF to address ongoing areas of concern in relation to promoting appropriate conduct, including the treatment of women, alcohol use and use of social media and representational behaviour more generally…

There will be a separate review to improve pathways for women in the Australian Public Service (APS) in the Defence organisation.

As well, the CDF (Chief of the Defence Force) will bring forward for implementation by the Government the opening up of all roles in the ADF to women, including combat roles, on the basis that determination for suitability for roles in the ADF is to be based on physical and intellectual ability, not gender.

Additionally, a cultural stocktake and review of alcohol and binge drinking, the use of social media and personal conduct at ADFA and in the ADF more generally has been commissioned…

I have ... asked the independent Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force to conduct a review of the management of incidents and complaints in Defence with specific reference to the treatment of victims, transparency of processes and the jurisdictional interface between military and civil law, which may lead to untimely decision making processes…

This past week has also seen a large number of public or private allegations of sexual or other forms of abuse drawn to the attention of my office, as well as to the attention of the Department of Defence and the media… The Secretary of the Department of Defence will engage an independent legal firm to review each allegation raised to determine the most appropriate way for these complaints to be addressed and whether further independent action is required to deal with any such matters.

Finally, Defence and ADFA will engage with a panel of selected University Vice Chancellors and residential College heads to assess increased cooperation between ADFA and Australian Universities on the challenges facing higher educational institutions and residences in relation to student behaviour and cultures.

This is more than simply a massive overreaction and a massive distraction to an ADF engaged in a war in Afghanistan. It seems also an attempt to use the undoubted bungling of one woman’s well-founded complaint to smuggle in a much wider social agenda that needs much, much more discussion. Are we prepared to have women put in harms way in war? Will the ADF be more lethal or more vulnerable with women in the front lines? Isn’t there now a very real risk of appointments of women in the ADF being made through affirmative action, rather than considerations of talent alone? Will this put lives in danger?

Something about this announcement of a huge assault-by-inquiry into our military strikes me as driven more by ideology than by a desire to right a specific wrong to an individual. I’m not sure the ADF will emerge from this a better fighting unit.

UPDATE

If the issue has been debated for a decade, why is Smith using the Skype Affair to abruptly settle it now - against the apparent reservations of his commanders?

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About Me

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..